Culture

Being pregnant on the internet sucks

The excitement of finding out I was pregnant is like nothing I've ever experienced before.

My husband and I were overjoyed, on vacation, blissful and so, so excited to start a family. We had this little, personal secret. This tiny human just starting to grow in my body, and not even I could really feel it.

And then the Googling began.

"My doctor won't see me until I'm eight weeks along. Is that normal?"

"When does the chance of miscarriage decrease?"

"What is a chemical pregnancy?"

Hundreds and thousands of the same questions from soon-to-be parents appeared before my eyes with each new search.

At first, that kind of immediate gratification brought me some sort of peace. I felt less alone when I saw all of those people experiencing the same extraordinary and scary things.

I quickly became consumed by the message boards, random articles, and the extreme amount of information out there about pregnancy. It was ... a lot.

All those beautiful feelings of excitement gave way to anxiety after the searching began.

At the beginning of pregnancy, it's hard to get any clear answers from anyone. Many obstetricians in the U.S. won't schedule a patient until they're at least eight weeks along, so those first months of pregnancy can be nerve wrecking. Hence why so many of us probably turn to Google.

But Google comes with its own anxieties.

While there's a huge amount of information out there about pregnancy and fetal development, it's very difficult to parse out what's real and what's fake.

I had to use every trick in my book as a science editor to try to figure out what internet-based advice I needed and what I could do away with.

It wasn't easy.

Finding actual studies with large sample sizes related to specific pregnancy questions is far more difficult than it should be.

Websites seeking quick search-based pageviews also love to publish stories that prey on the fears of pregnant people. Short stories that don't use expert voices but answer heavily-searched questions do a disservice to their readers, particularly when they're pregnant women who are anxious already.

The truth is, the thing that really helped me get over those early, anxiety-ridden days was time and our baby himself.

I couldn't help but think that if I — a person effectively trained in how to weed out scientific fact from fiction on the internet — had a hard time dealing with the overwhelming amount of pregnancy information out there, it might be nearly impossible for a person with less experience using that type of discernment to figure out what to pay attention to.

It took me weeks of obsessive Googling — plus a few doctor's appointments — to actually accept that my pregnancy would progress in the way that it would. No amount of new information delivered to me through my phone could change that.

The truth is, the thing that really helped me get over those early, anxiety-ridden days was time and our baby himself.

I'm a bit over seven months along now, but I remember the moment I managed to let go of all those questions and just let pregnancy be the mundane miracle it is.

I was about 17 weeks pregnant, lounging on my couch when my cat Fenby jumped on me and plopped down on my lap and stomach. Almost immediately after Fenby got comfy, I felt two tiny pops that felt like popcorn bursting in my abdomen.

Somehow, even though I'd never felt it before, I knew that it was the baby, kicking away, already probably annoyed that my cat was muscling him out.

And just like that, most of the worry and fear I felt around the unknown disappeared. This little person moved around in my body — the body that was feeding and housing him — and I knew we were in it together. Suddenly, it wasn't all about me and my worries: It was about him. And that made all the difference.

Aside from checking in on my weekly pregnancy apps and making it to my appointments, I try not to worry myself about those unknown questions anymore.

That said, as labor nears, Google has returned to my life and pregnancy in a big way. But at least now my kicking, wiggly baby is always there to remind me exactly what matters — and what's at stake — far away from the internet.

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